Lanigan Speaks

James S. Lanigan '39, the Democratic reform candidate who defeated Tammany Hall boas Carmine DeSapio, asserted Thursday night that "we've got to make democracy work otherwise we perish."

The question raised by the Communist challenge is "whether we can govern ourselves," he stated. Americans can't even demonstrate that democracy works here, the people in the rest of the world won't pay any attention to them.

Thus, Lanigan said that the purpose of the reform movement in New York is to take the power away from "the people who are in politics to make a dollar and to return it to the people in the community."

He said that the movement is testing "the people in a big city -- will they get off their soft chairs, turn off their TV's, will they decide who should run for Congress, where the new junior high school should be built? Will we do it as a people?"

"I think the answer is that the middle class will do it," Lanigan predicted. However, the great problem the middle class reform movement faces is communication with the underprivileged class. The majority of voters "probably can't even define fallout. And yet they are citizens."

He admitted that "the reform move ment in New York has not yet reached the underprivileged people. What do you do when one-half of a city is so depressed that they are no more capable of governing themselves than the Congolese What do you do when the white middle class won't accept the other races? Harlem is a tighter ghetto than any in Alabama."

This is the challenge the reform movement faces, Lanigan said. It must get the support of all the people, in the face of apathy, and any other obstacles. Recalling his defeat of DeSapio, he concluded, "the only way to make this work is sweat"

James Q. Wilson, lecturer in government, questioned many of Lanigan's assertions. Citing the poor record reform has had in this country, he advised would-be reformers to "tread warily."

He reiterated lanigan's point that reform has not been effective in the lower classes and questioned whether it ever could be. "Is popular control of the party necessary to democracy?" In fact, true popular control of the Democratic Party might actually wenken it, since various groups respond dierently to issues, he contended.